McFadden Sharon M, Vimalachandran Abhirami, Blackmore Elizabeth
Defence R & D Canada--Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M3M 3B9, Canada.
Ergonomics. 2004 Feb 26;47(3):257-80. doi: 10.1080/00140130310001629748.
The experiments in this paper examined the extent to which performance on a task employing an automatic tracker was similar to performance on tasks employing other types of automation that have been studied more extensively. Automated target tracking is being used in many sensor and navigation systems to improve performance and help the operator cope with increased data loads. With many automated systems these goals are not met. In particular, the operator often misses errors made by the automated system and may report no decrease in workload. Several hypotheses have been offered for the operator's failure to monitor an automated system adequately. These include lack of experience with the manual task, a vigilance decrement, complacency, and inappropriate level of automation. The relevance of each of these hypotheses to failure to monitor an automatic tracker adequately was examined. Performance and perceived workload on a target tracking task employing an automatic tracker, in which participants had to detect and then update the position of several targets (e.g. ships) at regular intervals, were measured as a function of number of targets, training with the manual task, experience, and time on task. The results suggested that failure to detect errors made by the automated system was due largely to the lack of visibility of the automation errors relative to other errors. However, complacency could not be ruled out entirely. Unlike some other tasks, the availability of a reliable automatic tracker did lead to a substantial reduction in perceived workload.
本文中的实验考察了使用自动跟踪器的任务表现与使用其他已被更广泛研究的自动化类型的任务表现的相似程度。自动目标跟踪正被应用于许多传感器和导航系统中，以提高性能并帮助操作员应对不断增加的数据负荷。然而，对于许多自动化系统来说，这些目标并未实现。特别是，操作员常常会忽略自动化系统所犯的错误，并且可能报告工作量并未减少。对于操作员未能充分监控自动化系统的情况，人们提出了几种假设。这些假设包括缺乏手动任务经验、警觉性下降、自满情绪以及自动化水平不当。本文考察了这些假设中的每一个与未能充分监控自动跟踪器之间的相关性。在一项使用自动跟踪器的目标跟踪任务中，参与者必须定期检测并更新几个目标（如船只）的位置，该任务的表现和感知到的工作量被测量为目标数量、手动任务训练、经验以及任务时长的函数。结果表明，未能检测到自动化系统所犯的错误主要是由于自动化错误相对于其他错误而言缺乏可见性。然而，自满情绪也不能完全排除。与其他一些任务不同，可靠的自动跟踪器的存在确实导致了感知工作量的大幅减少。
